Photo by Madeleine Dalla
The story of a songwriter turned aspiring pop star is a cliché in the music industry, but 25-year-old Texas native Tayla Parx took the opposite route to success. First famous for playing Little Ines in the 2007 remake of Hairspray and roles on Nickelodeon shows like True Jackson VP and Victorious, Parx stepped into songwriting because she was tired of the spotlight.
“I wanted to be behind the scenes,” Parx told Genius about her music industry origins in a recent phone interview. “[I wanted to] be part of something bigger than just my own career. It’s not about people knowing that I did it. It’s about simply me doing it.”
She inked her first publishing deal with Warner Chappell at 19, looking to songwriters like Priscilla Renea, James Fauntleroy, Dolly Parton, Brian McKnight, Babyface, and Ester Dean for inspiration.
Since then, Parx has become one of Ariana Grande’s closest collaborators, helped shape the sound of Fifth Harmony and its latest breakout act Normani, and penned hits with artists like Khalid, Panic! at the Disco, BTS, Janelle Monáe, Christina Aguilera, and Anderson .Paak. For Parx, songwriting is a welcome escape from her own reality.
“The fun part about being a songwriter is that you’re placed into these boxes,” she said. “Not genre-wise or anything like that, but boxes of where you’re writing someone else’s emotions, and the things that you write should be a reflection of what they feel. So there’s all these boundaries that you want to stay in to respect their story without putting your own emotions so deep into it.”
Her success behind the scenes, however, hasn’t stopped her from making strides as a solo act. Parx’s Tayla Made mixtape dropped in 2017, followed by her debut album, We Need to Talk, last month. Her debut examines the state of modern-day relationships, as facilitated through ever-changing technological innovations. She views her solo career as a chance to break out of those boxes and finally pin herself down in a way that she struggled to as a child actor.
“When it comes to me as an artist, I’m able to completely erase all of those boundaries, all of those rules that I have with other artists who have their own identity because I’m writing my own version,” she explained. “My own version of love, the way that I would say it, the way that I would sing it.”
In the midst of her opening slot on Lizzo’s summer tour, Parx caught up with Genius to break down some of her biggest songs, written both for herself and her biggest collaborators.
As told to Chris Mench.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Tayla Parx: “I know that with this project—because she did it with friends and because she was really in a safe place while creating it—she wanted it to be something that’s autobiographical. I respected the fact that she was free enough to want to build on the strong relationships that she built with her fanbase so far. I think that’s what makes fans so excited about it. They watched it happen, and they realized that they’re not getting the information two years late like what most albums are.
“I can’t really be mad at [the estates of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein for taking 90 percent the royalties] because since it’s going to those particular people, a lot of it is going to charity. But it is an issue that should be addressed when somebody is sampling a record. Nothing is new under the sun.
“I think lately there’s been a lot of going overboard with the amount of percentage you take on a sample. I think there should be set rates based off how much you actually took, whether you took a melody or you took a lyric. Right now, we’re just in a hot spot for people saying, ‘Hey, my song might not be as relevant and I’m gonna milk this.’
“It’s definitely one of those things that’s frustrating when an older artist or band takes just an absurd amount of royalties because it discourages newer artists from wanting to use that stuff. If we really were honest about it, I could go back to a lot of those people and say, ‘Well where did you get it from realistically?’ Even if you’re in the ‘70s, I could go back to a song from the ‘60s or the ‘50s, or I could go back to classical music and point out a melody or a cadence that was from that. If we all did that exact same thing we’d have over 100 people on every song. We’d all be suing everybody. Bach would be on every record.
“At some point we have to realize that music is a part of the exchange. Now if you’re completely ripping from somebody’s thing, then let’s figure that out. But for the most part, a lot of the cases that have been coming up and a lot of the publishing problems that have been coming up are just ridiculous. For ‘7 rings’ though, once I found out that a lot of that was going to charity, I was like, ‘You know what, that actually makes me feel better.’”
Tayla Parx: “That song came together in an interesting way because we wrote the hook a few years ago, and then Brendon heard it and he just was completely able to build onto it and make it his own as well. It was written in Aspen on my birthday, and I just needed a little hope.
“It was at a time when I felt like I was just starting to get off my feet as a writer and getting the respect from a lot of different artists. This was a few Grammy nominations in, but people didn’t really know that about me. It was hard sometimes because they didn’t realize all that I had done already. I just had to write a song that lifted my spirits up, and it was that song.
“I’m so happy that now people come to me during live concerts when I do my medley, or they hit me up on my Twitter or my Instagram and they tell me how that song affects them in the same way that it affected me when I was writing it. That means everything to me because it’s not a song about love. It’s just a hopeful song.”
Tayla Parx: “We had done the song a few years ago when his team reached out to me in the very beginning phases of writing for his next project. It was one of his first songwriting sessions with a songwriter. We wrote ‘Runaway’ [during our] very first session with STINT, the producer. And then I kind of forgot about the song.
“When it came back to my Tayla Made mixtape and I was thinking of features and songs that I really wanted to make sure saw the light of day, I revisited ‘Runaway.’ I hit up his team like, ‘Hey, how would you feel about us not letting this song disappear?’ It was awesome because the reaction from my fans and his fans was incredible, and a nice introduction to my own solo work.”
Tayla Parx: “[‘Love Lies’ and ‘Runaway’] were written years apart. During that time, both me and Khalid were able to grow as an artist. Also I was growing closer to Normani and helping her discover who she is apart from Fifth Harmony, which is an exciting journey. So when they both wanted to work together, I felt like I’m the perfect songwriter to bring both of my worlds together. We all have our different relationships and it was like a group of friends getting together in the studio.
“[Me and Normani have] known each other since I was a teenager. I first met Normani because Fifth Harmony was one of the first major projects that had given me the power to vocal produce and write and do what I needed to do creatively. I was very young and so were they.
“We’ve continued to work together through the Fifth Harmony albums as well as her first intro to her own artistry. We already had a different kind of history. When it came to working on her solo project, I was all in. I have to support, especially someone that is a young African American woman from the south. That’s something that I’ll always support.”
Tayla Parx: “My album is very much so a concept. You can hear that in the interludes. It’s kind of a continuation of the mixtape. I wanted it to be the first record of the new album because it was where I was at the top of it before going through this phase of falling in love and all that. At first it started off with, ‘I want you, and you, and you, and you, too.’ Not really liking the idea of commitment or being tied down in any way. I wanted to start off on that song to start the story right.”
Tayla Parx: “It was an incredible experience because as a writer I was challenged. I come from a very pop and R&B space, and she skirts the middle grounds between alternative and pop and rock and jazz and all these influences all in one. And she usually says all these things in a completely different way, visually and sonically.
“One of my favorite memories was just going down to Atlanta and spending a few days there. We were working at where they did OutKast’s first few albums, working with that entire crew. It was a historical studio and also just being with so many incredibly talented individuals. Definitely being back in the south was incredible. I’m from Texas, so anytime I can get back to the south and really pull from the world around me, I know I’m gonna create something new.”
Tayla Parx: “I came up with the chords first, and then I started to build the track around the sample of the iPhone message. At first I played it regularly on the piano and then I was able to have fun with the production, which I was able to do a lot with this project because I produced on a lot of it and I also wrote on a lot of it.
“It all started off with those chords and wanting to write a song about the confusion that happens during the talking phase. ‘Is it love yet or are we just two hearts on vacation?’ Too tired of doing this because it’s convenient almost. And because of the fact that I had never been in love yet, it was a genuine question. ‘Is this what love is?’
“I named my album We Need to Talk because I feel like sometimes we get so caught up texting and things are misconstrued. The things you miss in the tone and the sincerity in someone’s voice. When you can hear that on the phone and just communicate. I feel like it’s a sentence that we run away from. I just want my generation, my peers, and myself to be unafraid to communicate honestly and openly, no matter what the reaction from the other party is.”
Tayla Parx: “Ariana is obviously a massive fan of NASA. [A lot of songwriting is] coming up with different quirky ways of saying the things that we say every day, the feelings that we feel every day. Because that’s really what people like and also it’s one of the things that I pride myself on as a songwriter and was so happy that I was able to accomplish that with some other creatives. It was just an incredible experience bouncing off each other just to create a new way to say the same thing.”
Tayla Parx: “‘Easy’ was one of the hardest songs I have ever had to write. Which is hilarious because it’s called ‘Easy.’ I was just in the studio, so overwhelmed with emotion but I needed to get it out.
“It’s such a meaningful song to me because it’s just real, and it’s the final moment during this album phase where I realized, ‘Okay, I am being completely open about the fact that I’m hurt right now, and it’s something that’s new for me.’ It was a new challenge for myself to be openly hurt and to say, ‘Hey, I feel this way and it’s okay.’ It’s okay that I was able to allow myself the freedom to experience life, experience love, in a new way.
“That song helped me realize what my feelings and my attitudes were towards it. This is the chapter where I can finally close it because I understand it. I understand what this person came into my life for and I appreciate what they came into my life for, but I’m also okay with saying, ‘This was a fun chapter and it’s time to move on to the next one because I’ve grown as a person.’
“I remember I was in an ice bar in Stockholm. I travel a lot by myself and I would just have these nights where I would just be like, ‘Oh man okay I’m gonna try to go out and maybe get this person off my mind.’ There was this one particular moment where I said, ‘You know what, I have to turn around.’ All those other things where you think it’s gonna happen. You think you’re gonna get the ‘I miss you’ text at 10:30 PM or 2 in the morning. And you have this hope, and when it doesn’t happen, reality sets in and sometimes it’s necessary for you to move on.”
